The Pirate Party UK has been all but swamped by interest shown since they registered as an official political party last month, its leader claimed this week.
Andrew Peter Robinson, party leader, told The Register: "It has exceeded all expectations. Put it this way, donations have been coming in so fast that PayPal were concerned …

COMMENTS

Page:

Non-starter...

I'm hazarding a guess that the sort of person most likely to proclaim their support for the party is also the sort of person who either a) can't vote or b) is far too apathetic or lazy or disorganised to vote.

Expecting something *from* a freetard aside from whining is a bit of a longshot, to say the least.

Avast!

Hmm...

Will they campaign to remove region blocking on DVDs? This is an utter pain in the particulars when you have bought a legit DVD, want to use it in a legit player and the effing thing says "No". Keep the encoding/branding so people can choose what language they want, but do not block me for playing it!

(My old PC was hacked to get around this, my xBox is hacked for the same reason and then new PC will be hacked if it ever becomes an issue. I buys DVDs, I don't use torrents, and this locking pisses me off).

I'd also like to see the European trade restrictions torn up. If CD-Wow (or whoever) can get a legit CD/DVD from Hong Kong to me for less than I can buy it in the EU, then CD-Wow is not at fault. The companies in the EU are obviously running some kind of cartel/price protection racket. Just a shame that the EU does not have balls to take them to task.

Oh, and if they propose total transparency and accountability for MPs/MEPs expenses, along with requiring the EU to have their accounts properly audited and signed off without interference; then they may just get my vote (if they have a candidate in my area).

Seems like the public are getting fed up with the repulsive shenanigans of the political elite - the "Vote for a change" site is another sign of that.

No thanks

As an "artist" writing and selling computer games I can't imagine anything more catastrophic than it becoming legal to copy and distribute freely anything I create. I'd never bother writing anything again. And if record companies are offering artists such a bad deal the artists could always bypass them and use that Internet thing to do their own sales. But they don't because they make more money by using a record company.

For fucking fuck's sake

Their manifesto, if that is what you can call it, has three policies:

1) Reform of copyright and patent law

2) End excessive surviellence

3) Ensure everyone has true freedom of speech

It's not exactly comprehensive - I really don't know where to start on all the stuff that's missing, so I had a look at the tory's web site (I'm not one of them by the way!) Some things they are missing policies on:

Pay people for their work, freeloaders

I'm sorry, but 'politicising' the fact that you steal copyrighted material that people have worked hard to produce does not legitimise the fact that you are a THIEF. If you labour under the misapprehension that those involved are filthy rich and 'won't notice' the loss in royalties then you are bitterly wrong and misinformed - it's the 'small' folk behind the scenes that suffer. Would you go to work and expect not to get payed for it? Pull the other one, it's got a price tag on it.

Ahhh me hearties

Stop! Carry on..

@ King Edward I

Glad it's not just me thinking about all the stuff they can help with, rather than just films and music! Nice one :o)

@Fraser

I see where you are coming from. I think it's more along the lines of just getting a seat or two, rather than running for Government. If they had one or two seats, they can bring parliamentary proposals to the floor. Doubt they will topple any of the majority parties very soon.

At any rate, it's a good thing because it allows the voice of the freetards. Freedom of speach and all that..

re:Non-starter..

the reasion most pepol of the soret who would suport the pirate party are apathic is they see all the major partys troting out the same retrotic if this gets them intrested they I say full sail to them

@Fraser

there manifesto is still a work in progress they will fill out the rest of there policies in due corse and I have see pepol get elected on worse manifestos (the "save our hosptile" pepol")

and

"If you want to effect real change in the system, join a party, become an activist or write to your MP."

I bleve that joining the pirate party donating mony or campining and voteing for them counts as all what you said there

in the main I rember this form a campain add "56% of pepol said they would vote for us if they thought it would not be a wasted vote if they did vote for is it WOULD NOT be a wasted vote" you do not have to vote for the big 2 partyes you have a choice

@AC (08:39)

The Pirate Party UK has nothing to do with the pirate bay, or even the Swedish Pirate Party (apart from communication through the international pirate party site). Therefore they also have nothing to do with Lundström.

I joined. Might even consider standing if they need someone where-ever I'm living (but my terminal fear of talking to people offline might put that one on hold!).

@ Fraser

It always annoys me when people think that a political party should be voted in on the basis that they advertise themselves as having new inept policies for all Government depts and the countries facilities. When in reality all a party is advertising is, what they intend to spend our taxes on. Same old merry go round of "anything they can do, we can do just as costly".

It's time for ALL political parties to stop meddling in Government depts and thinking that IT IS A MUST to change and introduce other ways in doing stuff which will basically cost us the public by way of tax rises and a higher cost of living, and don't believe the hype that change is about reducing the costs of bureaucracy, because the only way any politician knows how to do that is too make job cuts and increase the dole queue.

Admittedly, this Black Beard party that's popped up on our shores could do with a some new ideas to add to their way of thinking. Perhaps they ought to thing Green, and show more Liberalism and you never know, they may just get one seat somewhere, and if people vote for them instead of the likes of Nucheka and Tory, then good on 'em.

0.o

Personally I feel there are serious problems with the privacy laws in this country. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers act(2000) is been misused daily and The European Convention of Human Rights (article 8) is been genuinely ignored. Nobody seems to have noticed and others just simply don't care....

If that makes me a Freetard in your eyes then I can think of another few words to describe your Idiocracy.

Well, let's get rid of half of them anyway. Why the hell the Tory party is involved in "Community Relations", "Culture", "Media and Sport", "Family" and various other of those sections is a mystery to me.

Less government is good government.

And to all the moaners - I don't give a stuff about your music or software, I'm not copying it or buying it, but I think my generation cares about the surveillance society, the handing of rights and laws to the corporate masters of IP and the suppression of technology (legitimate or otherwise) to support business interests.

95%

As someone who works in a rapidly shrinking music industry I can say with confidence that labels do not take 95% of the revenue from a CD sale. 40% at most, but then who do you think pays for the recording process and marketing of music???

I agree with the programmer who said he'd stop, why should he spend years working on something for it to be taken. It is theft, and is illegal (not unlawful).

Prepare for Boarding, me hearties!

@Fraser/ Anonymous: They do not necessarily need a complete agenda, just an issue on which to campaign. St Joanna of Lumley would probably get elected anywhere she chose without a complete agenda for supporting the Gurkhas and kicking Gordon Brown in the political nuts.

I wrote to Dave "Vote for Me" Cameron on the issue of copyright, and won't be voting Conservative as a result of their response.

Copyright in terms of its duration, has become an obscenity. If I invent a drug which saves the world from AIDs or Pandemic 'flu, I get 20 years of patent protection to get rewarded. I do not see why musicians and publishers should get longer, especially as only the fractional percentage of extremely successful artists get any significant benefit after this time.

I also suspect that they'll reduce or strictly limit penalties with respect to "not for profit" infringement. Cassette tapes used to be regularly swapped and copied amongst friends, yet record and CD sales didn't disappear, and only commercial copiers were pursued and punished. I see no reason why the same should not happen in the digital age

BNP

Regarding Copyright.....

Unauthorized use of a copyrighted work is wrong, period. Having said that, I do believe that the current copyright law does allow for an unreasonably long period of time before expiry. Do we really need to extend copyright protection beyond 25 years?

And why not?

@ all the @me

If the Pirate Party get a seat or two, they will be expected to perform their duties as an MP, not just bang on about their three policies. Being an MP is hard work, it's not all sponging off the state there is a hell of a lot of representation of constituents to do.

Copyright infringement, Copyright theft, I really don't care what you want to call it; illigal or unlawful I really don't give a shit, it's stealing, dress it up with any words that you want, but it's still stealing. Steal if you want to, but don't try to justify it, I have done it myself in the past and I don't try to dress it up with words to make myself feel better about it, it's wrong.

If the troys, labour or lib dems make up their policies on the spot, at least it's recorded in their published manifesto so you can see if they are doing this.

Yes, you could effect some change by working for the pirate party,or any other single issue party, or you could work within an established party with proper fleshed out policies to effect change of many people's thinking. Single issue parties are generally very bad for democracy because there aren't the skills within that party to handle the rest of politics.

If the PP are going to flesh out their policies over the next few weeks/months I'd like to see what else they have to say on other matters, I suspect we won't hear that much though.

*sigh*

crap - just when it looked like the PPUK was having some reasonably sensible ideas (proportional representation, scrapping ID cards and the underlying database and patent reform to prevent "trolling") - some semi-literate school leaver comes along and says "yay I R Votin 4 PPUK ... wen iz old nuff" and all of the anti-PPUK rhetoric seems horribly justified.

As a Swede, what they did was get many of the "apathetic" people to vote

Argh

Something like this needs to be done in America. I applaud these guys for realizing they probably aren't going to get anywhere but at least they're wise enough to realize this. The issues will at least have a chance to be discussed now.

I'm a musician and the first thing I do with new music is get it out there any way possible. Eventually downloaders find me and I make some money. IMO that is the way things need to work and I think it's a viable solution if done correctly.

Pirateparty experiences from Germany

In Germany we have had the pirate party (PP) for the European elections as well as the general elections at the end of September coming.

In the European elections, the PP got .9%, not bad for a first timer. Oddly enough, the mainstream media kept mum about that result as long as possible. When we got the exit polls and projections during the evening, only the major parties where listed not as usual the "other parties". News only told us that the feared "move to the right" - that is neonazi parties gaining votes - had not happened.

The PP was mentioned in the mainstream newsmedia a few days later as a party of fools and freetards wishing to download media for free. No mention of privacy rights, transparent government, internet censorship or citizen's rights at all.

Then our dear family minister and Mutterkreuzträgerin Ursula von der Leyen started her project for internet censorship which got a massive backlash, first from the "internet community" and then from parts of the general public and some mainstream media. Of course, all experts' opinions were discounted and those petitioning against the law where termed sympathetic to child pornographers by our minister of commerce. The law has been passed with some last millisecond amendments but will not come into force before the general election as said minister of commerce has arranged for it to be held up by the EU. It is expected that our constitutional court will demolish this law once they have finished with a few others currently in the pipeline, for instance the Federal trojan and secret home search powers for police.

The PP are still displayed as a bunch of ridiculous incompetent freetards by print and tv media.

However both the reigning grand coalition and opposition have picked up the theme of the internet.

The coalition says: The internet is a lawless place and needs to be regulated for your own good. German laws apply to people on the internet as well as offline and this has been mentioned to our politicians but neither they nor our German equivalent of the Daily Fail (Bild) have so far acknowledged the fact. Every week or so some politician or interested group demands extension of the anti-pedo censorship to their own pet peeve. Of course this is what von der Leyen distinctly said would not happen and anyone who says so is just a doomsayer.

The opposition says: if we are elected, we will do away with this at once. Unfortunately, nobody takes them serious as they are small parties who have been known to fall over whenever the big dogs bark. After all, a cushy position for an old party solider is much more important than the rights of the great unwashed, be reasonable now.

Some surveys - at least those taken on the internet give the PP a chance to get past the 5% hurdle and so into the Federal diet. They might end up somewhere near 6% if all their vocal supporters actually do vote.

Support for the PP is also increased by the fact that both the conservative and the socialdemocratic parties have abandoned all pretence of acting for the citizen, preferring instead to ridicule any democratic movement and pump money into failed banks. We are in a similar situation as in 1933 - every established party is equally corrupt and people would like to vote for something new, whatever it is. This is even used as an argument against voting for a party that the voter thinks represents him best, as in: you must vote for a big party or we will get the same mess of multiple little parties in the federal diet that got the nazis into power in '34.

There is a German saying that you hear during each election for several years now: You've only got the choice between the plague and cholera. Voting decisions have been made on the logic of: Vote for the lesser evil. The PP might actually change that.

So, yes. Even as a small party and constantly ridiculed by the press the PP got the powers to pick up some of their themes. Unfortunately the ruling powers get it dead wrong and the rest can't be trusted to keep their words. One thing is clear though, since the coming of the PP German politicians have become dead scared of the internet and are busy passing laws to regulate it. We are waiting for a law saying you cannot write content without a licence like a radio station or ham. Something like this may appear after the general elections.

I'd like to close with a quote that appears quite regularly on German internet boards these days wherever our politicians' attitude towards the internet and citizens' rights are discussed: